Flavor Boulevard

Do you have those times when you keep craving something sweet, even after you wiped clean a cereal bowl worth of Double Fudge Brownie, exterminated many prunes, and skillfully chewed up four pirouette cookies like a mafia boss smoking cigars? I’ve started to see such danger of staying up late, but sweet stuff is always easier to eat than savory stuff in those wee hours. To avoid having my belly exceed my face, I started going through pictures of food (it helps more than studying and thinking about food), and found some munchtastic  sweet treats I meant to but never got around to blog about.

1. Chè khoai môn (taro che)

One of the few country treats without mung bean paste. Depending on each root and how long it’s cooked, the purplish pale taro cubes can be grainy, nutty, a little chewy, or al dente, like scallop potato minus the butter. However they are, they serve as a textural contrast to the gooey pudding-like sticky rice base. I’m particularly charmed by the vibrant green color in this Lee’s Sandwiches‘ rendition, hopefully from pandan leaf extract. You know it’s a skilled cook when the sticky rice grains are still visible, yet so soft you don’t need to chew. Taro che is less sweet than other kinds of che, as coconut milk alone gives much of its sugary taste.

2. Chè bắp (corn che)

Another rare sticky rice concoction without mung bean intervention. Another pair of contrasting textures: crisp and firm kernels versus luscious goo. Another mild pudding sweetened by coconut milk. Bellaire Kim Son’s kitchen strayed from the common recipes that call for shaving the kernels off the cob, and used whole kernel sweet corn straight out of the cans. A simple, cheap, inhomogeneous toothsome mess.

More than 18 months ago: chè đậu trắng, chè bột báng, chè trôi nước

Sitting still, it looks like a rock. It is sweet with a hint of lard. It is chewy with a weak crunch, similar to a lasagna’s crust. The smooth, thick black skin shines like lacquered wood, but possesses an almost clear and cool embrace of jello. Though closely related to the superglutinous and mud-heavy banh it, banh gai takes it light.

The same everenduring stuff of Vietnamese villagers’ creations are thrown together, wrapped and steamed in banana leaves: sticky rice flour, water, mung bean paste, sugar. If you make it in cone shape and let the sugar brown the flour naturally, you get banh it. Go the extra mile of picking, chopping, sun-drying, boiling, and grinding the ramie leaves to a black powder that you would mix with your sticky rice flour in a 1:10 ratio, then after the fire settles you get banh gai.

Actually, you get the skin of banh gai. The thorny ramie leaves with silver underside give the black buns their color and trademark names, “thorn leaf banh it” (bánh ít lá gai), “thorn leaf banh” (bánh lá gai), or, most economically, “thorn banh” (bánh gai). But as proof of their everversatile imagination with ingredients, the villagers of North Vietnam mix the mung bean paste with shredded coconut, lotus seed, ground peanut, winter melon (bí đao) for crunchiness, and translucent cubes of pig fat or vegetable oil for a mild saltiness.

The thorn leaf buns sold in package of three for $1.99 at CD Bakery & Deli don’t have fat cubes, peanuts, and pieces of winter melon. They are wrapped with plastic instead of banana leaves. They are labeled “mung bean black sesame mochi”. They contain yellow and blue (?) food colorings. But I like their slightly sweet, slightly crunchy, slightly cool black skin.

After a week at room temperature, they get white mold. Perhaps, it is to match the white sesame seeds on top.

Address: CD Bakery & Deli (in the Lion Market plaza)
1816 Tully Road, #198
San Jose, CA 95122
(408) 238-1484
Open 7 days 8am – 8pm

Something else from CD Bakery: sugarcane juice

Next on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh bía (Vietnamese-adapted Suzhou mooncake)

One blue-sky Sunday in May. A section of Channing Way, between Shattuck and Fulton, was blocked. Two girls draped in summery garments danced to joyous Hawaiian tunes on a sunlit wooden stage, surrounded by a small crowd of both familiar spectators and curious passing pedestrians. The seductive smell of grill beef got caught in the wind here and there.

So it was the street front of the 61st annual Satsuki Bazaar and Arts Festival at the Berkeley Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Temple on Channing Way. Inside the temple, a multitude of items displayed for silent auction held visitors’ footsteps, starting with orchids, matted photos and paintings, gift cards to sushi bars and diving lessons…

…to porcelain sets, stuffed toys, a wooden sculpture of Daruma, and Shichi Fukujin in a glass box.

But few things can attract everybody like food. The “dining hall” was packed to the door like a beehive overflowed with nectar.

Every few minutes there were tiny old ladies weaving among the crowd with big trays of musubi and sweets from the dining hall to the “bakery”, a front desk covered with homemade edible goods, baked, rolled, fried, pickled, and jarred.

We just couldn’t help it. The umeboshi (pickled plum) was going fast at $5 per small jar and $8 per big one. Mudpie hungrily grabbed onto two jelly jars, kumquat ($4) and persimmon-pineapple-apricot ($5), which have the exact same color. Then we started loading pastries into our bag…

First came the blueberry scone, which tasted like wet sand, but we paid only one buck for it, can’t complain.

Then there were little squares of mochi (and a lonely piece of brown banana cake). Each square cost a buck too (and they are about 20 times smaller than the scone), but none was as good as the mochi cubes in front of Cafe Hana. Pretty scrumptious lonely piece of brown banana cake though.

Now these are the real disappointment. The manju, mochi balls with red bean paste, looked so much better than they tasted. Is the yellow egg-shaped pastry dotted with poppy seed and filled with sweetened taro paste also a manju? Guess how much they were. $1.25 each. Sugar excess.

Fortunately the savory side is a greener pasture. The 2-dollar spam musubi hit the spot just right (processed meat always tastes so good after you reprocess it with sugar and soy sauce). The nori was mild, thick, and moist.

We top things off with a lustrous loco moco, a burger patty squatted on a bed of extremely moist short-grained rice, covered with a runny egg and a ladle of beef gravy. After one spoonful, Mudpie couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the afternoon. The whole thing was like a peppery, creamy, rich butter boat. All for $5, and honestly it would be just as spoon-licking without the grilled meat.

And so I learned something new. At Vietnamese Buddhist pagodas, you can find only vegan food regardless of festive occasions or normal days. Here at a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple, there is plenty of meat, crackling and sizzling on one blue-sky Sunday in May.

61st Annual Satsuki Bazaar and Arts Festival, May 22-23, 2009
Berkeley Buddhist Temple
2121 Channing Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 841-1356

Update: I WON something in the silent auction: an adorable set of tea cups and tea bowls, notice the matching pairs with one tea cup slightly taller than the other. The visit was a success!

One Saturday we shove our homework into a corner and make a dash for San Francisco before another spring storm takes over the bay. Parking is as easy as hiking with a twisted ankle, but all that matters is we find a spot, then stroll a mile to the food bazaar on Webster street, Japan Town, arriving just a little bit before noon. Up from the steep sidewalk we see rows of white tents and white chairs, smoke rolling above the grills covered with beef and pork riblets, a line getting long on one side of the conglomeration. It is still early in the first morning of the Cherry Blossom Festival.

The carnivore instinct leads me right to the grill. It’s never too early to eat meat. The first booth whips out rice bowls with either ribs or unagi, braised eel cut into palm long chunks. We don’t feel like filling up with a rice bowl just yet, so we walk further down the row eying signs, then back track to the Nihonmachi Little Friends’ booth for three skewers of grilled beef at a mere five bucks.

Crispy-charred-edge marinated beef, though erring a little on the chewy side, delight my feet after that hike from our parking spot. The downright old school meatiness would have well enhanced the kiddie dollar snack omusubi, wedges of plain white rice mixed with nori bits, which Mudpie buys way after we finished the skewers. Waste not want not, the musubi will find its place in my lunch this week, after I wrap it up in nori sheets and maybe with a slice of fried spam. My idea sprouts from seeing at least three booths selling spam musubi and dozens of family walking around with golden brown sauce at the corner of their mouths. I, however, fall victim to the facile yakisoba, soft stir fry noodle with crunchy cabbage dressed only with soy sauce and seaweed sprinkles. The noodle tastes flatter than it looks, and certainly flatter than the wad of six dollar bills we pay for it, but it is a good pacifier for the empty stomach.

One block east of the food tents, the San Francisco Taiko Dojo artists are pounding their drums on stage. Their vigorous sincerity pumps rhythmic waves of festive air into the onwatchers’ lungs. To the hundreds of Japanese gathering there, I wonder if the drums have the same effect as the firecrackers we set off on Lunar New Year’s Eve, a simple string of sound that brings both excitement and quietude. The drums do halt my hungry thoughts for a moment, until I see some kids weaving about the crowd holding teriyaki burgers and shaved ice.

We’re back to Webster. The teriburger line wraps around one end of the food square, and Mudpie refuses to take one for the team. The fried fish ball line is no better, but I want to find out what the frenzy is all about, whether Mudpie does or not.

Just as we get in line, a lady asks us if we know the fish balls are any good. We don’t. So during the twenty-five minute wait the lady and Mudpie go over what is up with the LHC in Geneva, current status of the string theory job market, Berkeley Bowl, the beautiful harmony between Eastern religions and sciences, Francis Collins, and which patisserie is the best in San Fran. Meanwhile I can’t take my eyes off her unagi rice bowl, the eel skin shines gloriously in its rich brown sauce. Slowly but solidly we get to the tent where all the pouring, flipping, and toothpicking take place. The cast iron molds are just as busy as the deft hands hovering over them.

Although the man jokingly says it’s a secret recipe from Japan while he collects orders, this fish ball booth is the only booth with a crystal clear ingredient list on the banner. Although it is called takoyaki (“fried octopus”), it’s a simple ball of batter, fish stock, egg, and seasonings. (Still, it resembles an octopus head, intentionally or not.) Although it looks perfectly solid, it has an air pocket inside, resulting from the flipping of the hemisphere while the batter is still runny. Although it is fried, it is soft. Although the long line suggests that it is amazingly worth the wait, it is not. The seaweed sprinkles, red ginger and green onion do little more than cosmetics, the okonomiyaki sauce is rather too tart. Its goodness lies solely in the warmth to battle those crisp wind blows. In hindsight we probably should have stood in the teriburger line.

As the tongue craves for some sweets, we walk around to the grilled beef and yakisoba side, this time to stand in line for a red bean pancake, imagawa yaki.

The fluffy dough is just like any pancake our mothers make for breakfast on special days. The making process, like those fish balls, is fun to watch. They pour the batter into rows of circular iron molds, wait a few minutes for the batter to semi-solidify, then comes this semi-circular trough, looking  like a cracked-open bone filled with marrow, from which they spoon some red bean paste onto half of the cooking pancakes. The other half are flipped over to make the pancake tops. The batter turns solid, the division between two halves is sealed, three bucks are handed over for exchange of two blowing hot cakes. Mudpie loves the bean stuff. So much that he insists on looking for more inside the Kintetsu mall. I feel more inclined to sitting down, and those benches near the Kinokuniya bookstore and Izumiya have never sounded better. So into the mall we go.

But boy am I a fool. On days like this benches are a luxury, and it’s just rude to fight over a seat with the petite ladies in colorful kimonos and huge wooden zōri, or families with babies. The mall is packed. The human flow is like a school of salmon. My tiny stature serves me well in whizzing through elbows and shoulders, but I would have missed the best catch of the day had Mudpie not spotted the nameless but busy tables in front of Cafe Hana.

Ten bite sized cubes of cold mochi, five different flavors. From right to left: 1. yomogi (mugwort) – tastes as grassy as its alternate name kusa mochi – “grass mochi”, 2. mango – tastes more like jackfruit or longan, 3. kinako – actually this is warabimochi (jelly-like sweet made of bracken starch instead of sticky rice), covered in soybean flour (kinako) which tastes like peanut butter, 4. lychee – the second tastiest, and 5. strawberry – the tastiest. Chewy, refreshing, gently sweet like a rose petal, I would eat these all day. The best part: it is assembled upon request. The confectionery magistrates, who may be part of Cafe Hana’s team, cut and roll these slabs of sweets in powder and into the plastic boxes, each containing only one flavor. But if you kindly ask, they’ll throw together a mixed box for you at the same price. Top it off with a three dollar scoop of lychee ice cream, as we do, and you’ll feel ten or fifteen years younger. You know, those days of hustling about the school cafeteria, eating cheap treats, feeling fresh and complete. If there’s anything I don’t regret buying at this fair, it’s the lychee ice cream and the mochi at those tables in front of Cafe Hana.

If there’s anything Mudpie doesn’t regret buying at this fair, I think it’s the daifuku, also from those tables in front of Cafe Hana. That red bean addiction is strong.

Pink or green, smooth or sesame coated, the daifukus are good companions for chrysanthemum tea. The plain, chewy sticky rice outer layer damps the sweetness of inner red bean paste. The cold confection enhances the warm drink.

On our way out of the mall, we sidestep in line for one last treat at the flowery booth Kissako Tea. They have the little mochi balls in pink, green, and white with red bean paste filling, and they also have the mitarashi dango, which I’ve always been curious about since I read Sugar Bar Diva’s toothsome post. Four simple sticky rice balls on a skewer sounds like a boring snack, but the chewiness dressed in a rich syrup of soy sauce, sugar, and starch is everything but plain. Its taste and texture amazingly resemble malt sugar. It marks a triumphant incorporation of savory condiments into the sweet realm.

At four something in the afternoon, the food bazaar is still going strong. All booths, not just the fish ball and the teriburger, now have a long line. The kids are still with wide open eyes, Hello Kitty headbands, spam musubi and cups of shaved ice. The dogs are still obediently looking at their humans eating beef skewers. The girls in black and white kimonos are still taking pictures between giggles.

And so we march our full tummies a mile back to the parking spot. The sky is blue. The streets are quiet. The wind has ceased its dry cold swirls. The car stands there, with a ticket.

It’s just a white bun made from sticky rice, loosely wrapped in banana leaf so that it doesn’t attach indefinitely to your fingers, ready to sandwich a thick cut of cha lua. The purpose of the bun is purely a textural enjoyment, it has neither taste nor smell. All flavors come from the sausage. Eating the bun alone would be like chewing an incredibly huge piece of gum, the only difference is you can swallow the bun. Come to think of it, we can make a bunch of bite size sticky rice “gum” for American school kids, they can chew until they’re bored, and swallow it, no unfortunate mess under the desks and your shoes. Cool, innit?

Because of either its simplicity or its antiqueness, the bánh dầy is not quite a favorable snack among the young Vietnamese these days. Or perhaps because it is a treat from the North? Southerners have a sweet tooth and are attracted to fatty, rich, flavor-compact concoctions. Bánh dầy is none of that. When I was in Saigon I knew of bánh dầy through three sources: the extremely common tale of bánh chưng bánh dầy, the book “Hanoi 36 streets” by Thạch Lam, and the tiny buns filled with bean paste (bánh dầy đậu) Little Mother got for me from Ngọc Sáng bakery in District 1. Another case of cross cultural similarity: compare the banh day dau with the Japanese daifuku: the sticky rice coat is exactly like mochi, the mung bean filling is salty while daifuku’s filling is sweetened.

For something the size of a can bottom, banh day makes a dense snack (just like its pyramid shape cousin, banh it). We got both at Giò Chả Đức Hương in Houston, but banh day is not always there. The reason might be the good amount of work in making those simple looking buns. An authentic banh day is supposed to be made by pounding cooked sticky rice to a goo, although the packages of sticky rice flour in stores would do the job. I’m not sure which method  Đức Hương used. I also wrongfully microwaved it once, the result was a plain thick blob that could possibly rival superglue. Yep, banh day is supposed to be eaten at room temperature (not for folks who want a warm meal).

Address: Đức Hương Giò Chả (Houston)
11369 Bellaire Blvd, Ste 950
Houston, TX 77072

Given how often my family comes here, I feel obliged to give this store a proper post. About every other week or so, my parents make the hour-long drive to get a loaf or two of cha lua (silk sausage) and maybe a few Vietnamese between-a-snack-and-a-meal goodies. The affable owner lady knows our usual grabs, and we know her trustworthy provision. Whether it’s wrapped in banana leaves, aluminum foil, or cling wrap, Giò Chả Đức Hương has the best of its kind in Bellaire.

The shelves of nem (fermented pounded pork sausage), bánh tét (sticky rice log), and bánh ít (sticky rice pyramid). These small bánh tét are sold all year round, they are only about 4 inches long, usually with vegan filling (mung bean paste or banana). They make an appropriate snack for a teenager, but usually a little too much for me. Unwrapped below, left-right-down: bánh giò – bánh ít – bánh tét:

Bánh giò always reside on the front counter, next to loads of chả (sausages). There are chả chiên (fried), chả lụa (lean pork), chả Huế (spicy), chả bò (beef), chả gà nấm hương (chicken and shiitake), and boxes of chà bông (also known as  ruốc in the North, pork floss in English, and similar to rousong in Chinese).

A few more pictures of bánh tét just to do partial justice of how many kinds they have there:

Black bean mixed with sticky rice, disrupting the usual smooth glutinous texture by nutty bites.

Sticky rice mixed with pandan leaf extract for flavor and color. A sweet touch.

Plain white sticky rice, usual fatty pork and mung bean paste filling. The classic.

Address: Đức Hương Giò Chả in Bellaire, Houston
11369 Bellaire Blvd, Ste 950
Houston, TX 77072
(near the Vietnam War Memorial)
(281) 988-6155

This sausage store sets their price a knuckle higher than the Asian markets, but the care, the freshness, and the family touch are unbeatable.

Bánh chưng and bánh tét to the Vietnamese Tết are like turkey and ham to the American Thanksgiving. The holiday feast just wouldn’t feel right without them. Although I have blogged about these sticky rice squares and logs before, the lunar new year has come back, and so are they. Sticky rice can be uberfilling in large quantity, and like all festive food, it’s not recommended that you feast on these dense beasts day after day, as satisfaction would turn into tiresomeness. But once a year, or maybe twice, a couple slices of banh tet sound so much more interesting than cereal, rice, even noodle soup.

Banh chung and banh tet have rather similar ingredients, especially when they’re made by Vietnamese Southerners. Both are wrapped in leaves (although slightly different kinds of leaves), and boiled for hours in water that is sometimes spiced with lemongrass. After cooking, a heavy weight is put on banh chung to drain the water, while banh tet are rolled around to perfect the cylindrical shape. I remember we used to hang pairs of banh tet in my grandfather’s kitchen, taking one down everyday during the week of Tet to whip out a nice settling meal with thịt kho trứng (pork and egg stew), dưa giá (pickled bean sprout),  and spring rolls. There are the savory kind with meat and mung bean paste, and the vegan kind for those who want to practice self-control on the first day of Tet. In Houston, my mom usually gets the savory kind from Giò Chả Đức Hương, where we also get our cha lua supply, and the vegan kind from Linh Son pagoda. I branched out this year and tried a meaty log from Huong Lan Sandwiches 4 in Milpitas.

Their banh tet measures about 7 inches long, making eight thick nice slices, each has a chunk of fatty pork in the middle, pink and spiced with pepper. The sticky rice coat here gave its leaf wrapping a bit insecure sliminess when we first unraveled, but all was well. The banh tet smelled great, the sticky rice has a tight but soft texture. The seasoned bean paste is just salty enough to intrigue. In some way, banh tet is better than banh chung because every bite guarantees a bit of everything. No piece will miss the meat completely and no bite will get all the meat, the stuffing is even throughout the whole banh.  It was honestly good by itself without condiments. Huong Lan Sandwiches had not failed me.

And neither did Thao Tien. When we got there last week in our quail quest, Thao Tien’s employees were busy running a small table pyramidized with banh chung and banh tet. They locate nicely in front of the Grand Century mall, passed by hundreds of people Tet shopping that day. Seeing the sale went like hot cakes (the sticky rice cakes were actually still warm), we were too eager to snatch one home that we forgot to check the tiny white sticker on the side. Surprise, we had grabbed a bánh tét chuối (banana banh tet).

It’s solely vegan. The sticky rice coat is made interesting with dots of black beans on shiny green background. The core is sweet, mushy banana in a reddish purple hue. This is just the usual ivory banana that always ripe too soon, but somehow slow cooking in a compact block of sticky rice wrapped by banana leaves makes the fruit change color. Chemical reactions? It still tastes sweet, with a hint of bitter (for lack of a better word) like a guava skin. And it looks beautiful to me.

The banana banh tet also goes well with my rotisserie chicken from Safeway, minus the guilt of defeating the whole vegan purpose thing. Thao Tien’s logs are also shamelessly long, almost two times bigger than Huong Lan’s. I will be eating banh tet every day for the rest of the week. Happy Tết to bánh tét and me!

Address: Hương Lan Sandwiches 4
41 Serra Way, Ste. 108
Milpitas, CA 95035
1 bánh tét with meat: $6

Thảo Tiên restaurant
Grand Century Mall
1111 Story Road #1080
San Jose, CA 95122
1 vegan banana bánh tét: $10

You know how school kids don’t get tired of peanut butter sandwich even if they eat it every day for lunch? Well, every time I catch the BART down to Fremont, it’s hard to pass up the chance to stop by Huong Lan Sandwich in Milpitas for a fresh crusty loaf, or many of those banh mi’s – a week’s supply for lunch.

When in California, be liberal. The store has diversity. Above is packages of bánh bèo (white) and most likely bánh bột lọc (leaf-wrapped). Many kinds of cookies, crackers, shrimp chips, and other snacks unknown to ubercmuc. Below is the real goodies: nice warm bánh bao (steamed pork bun), bánh cốm (the bright green flat thing), bánh giò (leaf-wrapped pyramid), and mini bánh chưng (the squares).

Here’s the square unwrapped and cut in four. The pork is fatty, which is not quite right, but nonetheless it’s well done. So the story goes as follows: in a competition among the princes in ancient Vietnam, the king asked all the princes to find an exceptionally good food. The youngest prince, having no money and little power, couldn’t afford fancy stuff like ginseng and who knows what in the woods, so with the advice of a god in his dream, he took sticky rice, meat, and mung bean to make a bánh, wrapped in lá dong (Phrynium placentarium), and boiled for hours. The bánh is a green square, symbolizing the square Earth, pork – the animal, and mung bean – the plants. So I suppose fatty or lean pork doesn’t really matter to the story. After all, we have some really chubby animal, not just skinny ones. Mung bean seems to be Vietnamese’s favorite legume, just like red bean is to the Japanese. Perhaps because it’s good as a paste (in both sweet and savory bánh), a powder (on xôi), whole beans (in sweet deserts like chè), and as an ice cream flavor.

Don’t let size tricks you. Half of this mini bánh chưng definitely made a filling breakfast, the whole thing would be too filling. And if you’re too full you wouldn’t be able to eat a nice crusty bánh mì for lunch… uhm hmm…

Look at all that pickled carrots and radish. It’s a balanced meal. I usually get bánh mì thịt nướng (grilled pork), but that is proven quality, so this time gà nướng (grilled chicken) is up for test. I should stress that no matter what the filling is, a banh mi can never go wrong. You can put just soy sauce and a banana in it, and it would still be yummy. Something about the crusty, flaky bread that makes everything better. Back to the chicken. Well, it’s not dark meat, and it’d take some serious brining to make white meat flavorful. So let’s put it gently, I’ll be loyal to grilled pork.

Hương Lan must be a chain, or it’s just a name sandwich-makers like. They’re everywhere in this area, but I believe every store has a different touch to it. Here they put peanuts and nước mắm in the grilled pork bánh mì. The more flavors the merrier. Address: 41 Serra Way #108, Milpitas.

Oh, the end of the story is, the youngest prince, proved to be the wisest, was chosen for the crown. 🙂

The recipe calls for a lot of prep time (up to a year!), and the products are little triangular pyramids sold for $3.75 a bunch at sandwich shops. But hey, if you can make bánh ú tro, you can enjoy it any time of the year without having to wait until the Fifth of Lunar May.

1. Ash water

Use the fine, soft ash from burnt coal, dissolve in water. The common ratio is 50 grams of ash for every liter of water, but it varies depend on how strong the ash is and how strong you want your banh to be. Let the ash collect at the bottom, leaving a clear solution. Sift the solution to get rid of dirt and coal bits.
You can use lime powder instead of ash. White lime gives bánh ú tro the natural green hues of wrapping leaves, red lime gives them reddish amber hues. The mixing ratio is 20 grams/liter for lime powder.

2. Sticky rice

– Use 1-year-old sticky rice. Such grains are more powdery than new sticky rice. Wash sticky rice with cold water, then soak in ash water overnight or until the grains break easily when you press them between two fingers. Soaking time varies with different ash types and grain types, but beware that grains soaked for too long can make the banh smell like ash.
– After the grains are done soaking, rewash them thoroughly with water and let dry.

3. Sweet filling

Traditional bánh ú tro doesn’t have filling and is eaten with honey or sugar. But bánh ú tro with fillings are arguably tastier than their plain counterparts, and here are a few filling ideas:
– Mung bean paste: split and peeled mung beans are washed and cooked until tender, mashed while it’s still hot and mixed with sugar. The bean-sugar ratio varies to your likings.
– Red bean paste: soak red beans in water overnight to soften them. Wash, cook until tender, mash. In a skillet, add 1 tbs oil and 200g brown sugar for every 500g red bean, stir on low heat until all sugar dissolves. Let cool.
– Grated coconut: boil water and sugar with ratio 1:1 on low heat , stir frequently until all sugar dissolves. Pour the syrup into grated coconut and mix until it becomes a soft sticky ball.

4. Wrapping bánh ú tro

– Use bamboo leaves (about 5-6 cm wide and 30 cm long) or banana leaves cut into similar size. Wash the leaves clean and let dry.
– Bend one end of a leaf into cone shape. Use 2-3 leaves to increase the banh size.
– Put in 2-3 teaspoons of sticky rice for the plain kind. Or 1 tsp sticky rice, followed by 1 tsp filling, then 1 tsp sticky rice on top for the sweet kind.
– Wrap the remainder of the leaf tightly around and over the cone until all faces are covered.
– Tie it up with a nylon string. Then tie every ten banh into a bunch with a long string to easily pull in and out of boiling water.

5. Boiling bánh ú tro

– Cover the bottom of a large pot with banana leaves or bamboo leaves to keep banh from sticking to the metal.
– Arrange banh in the pot. Pour water. Water level should be at least 4 inches above the banh. Make sure banh stay submerged the whole time, you can cover banh with a big sieve and a weight on top to keep banh from floating up.
– Boil banh for 45 minutes to an hour (after the water starts boiling). Add more water if the level gets too low.

Submerge cooked banh in cold water for 10 minutes to aid cooling, then hang them dry. Well made ones can last 2-3 weeks at room temperature.

Recipe translated from source.

Linh Son pagoda, Houston, click on the image to see more pictures of the pagoda.

Linh Son pagoda, Houston. Click on the image to see more pictures of the pagoda.
Although not all Vietnamese living oversea can take a day off to go to the pagodas on the first day of Tet, many manage to keep the tradition. Of course there is no strict requirement that one has to be looking at and praying to the Buddha at a certain day, for a certain amount of time, or with a certain prayer. Tet is not a religious based tradition. But many Buddhist and even non-Buddhists like to go to the pagodas on the first day of Tet to have a peaceful start of the new year, to feel spiritually lightened (hopefully enlightened as well) and pure on the important day. Many also choose to eat no animal product on this day, as it’s the new spring and every creature deserves to be happy and live in peace. Nonetheless, vegan restaurants are somewhat scarce in the conservative town, places with banh chung banh tet for sale don’t generally make the vegan version, and to deprive a Vietnamese of banh chung banh tet on a Tet’s day is somewhat cruel. So the pagodas take on the precious task.

Dua mon is pickled vegetables, here packaged in jars, and apparently on sale for $5? I believe I haven’t had dua mon. I’m not big on veggies in vinegar-sugar-salt mix, the only exception to me is pickled bean sprout (dua gia). But perhaps because every house during Tet is so overabundant with meat and glutinous rice, the dua being a bit tart, a bit sweet, crunchy, and light is a nice change in both taste and texture. In fact, with its economic nature and longevity, a big jar of dua on its own makes Tet in poor households.

Back to the star of Tet food. The square ones are banh chung, the cylindrical ones are banh tet. Banh chung is wrapped in dong leaves, banh tet is wrapped in banana leaves (theoretically). Banh chung declothed:

and quartered:

Mother got to the banh tet before I did, with a knife. I was 5 minutes too late to grab the camera. So here, in all gruesomeness, six “khoanh” of banh tet:

If you’re wondering, yes, their basic structure, except for the shape, is the same. Thick coat of glutinous rice outside, simple mung bean paste inside, since these are vegan banh made and sold at the pagoda. The meaty version of banh chung has lean pork amidst the bean paste, and that of banh tet has fatty pork. The outermost rim of glutinous rice is somewhat greenish yellow, naturally dyed by the leaves wrapping them and the long cooking process, in which they are submerged in water for hours. Banh chung was born in the North of Vietnam over 2000 years before Jesus was born, and especially made for Tet and Tet only. It even has a myth to explain its symbolism. Banh tet was its little brother, made for easy cooking and carrying, more popular in the South, available in one form or another all year long. The rice layer is soft and gummy, the bean paste middle is a little salted and sweetened. It’s vegan, but it doesn’t lack flavor. It’s really really heavy though. One khoanh of banh tet for breakfast and I was full from 10AM until 7PM! I would have been starved otherwise, classes all day, and school cafeterias don’t serve vegan food. That means if you like to keep yourself reasonably full, with 6 bucks you are full for 3-6 days of banh tet, and 4-8 days of banh chung. Pretty good huh?